Sharing my experience on the new official WhatsApp transfer from Android to iPhone

[marshmallow96]

Just to share my personal experience to transfer Whatsapp from Android to iOS - hope it's helpful to those who still have doubts and mulling over the potential risk and inconvenience associated with the transfer (one would genuinely be concerned after reading all the negative reviews on Move to iOS app!)

For details and comments from my experience, scroll down and read on.

For a TL;DR version, what you need to do to transfer WhatsApp from Android to iPhone while keeping your iPhone settings:

1. Backup iPhone and reset phone.
2. Do the WhatsApp transfer from Android via the Move to iOS app.
3. Upon successful transfer of WhatsApp to iPhone, immediately do a WhatsApp backup to iCloud in the WhatsApp app.
4. Reset iPhone again, this time restore iPhone from the backup you made in Step 1.
5. After restoration, download WhatsApp from App Store.
6. Open WhatsApp and choose restore backup from iCloud.
7. You’re done.

For a transfer from Android to brand new iPhone, it’s straightforward. Just use the Move to iOS app, follow every instruction and give it plenty of TIME and PATIENCE. You’d need both. It also helps to switch off all the power settings on Android for closing app and locking phone etc.

P.S.: I forgot to take photos or screenshot for some steps due to exhaustion or excitement at that point some images are my own, while some are from publicly available images, added to the thread for clarity.

 

[marshmallow96]

To start off, I have:

• An iPhone 13 Pro Max, in use as the main phone since Feb 2022.
• A 4-year-old Samsung S9+, still continue to carry cos my WhatsApp is inside.

So I have been carrying both phones around since Feb 2022, with S9+ tethered to iPhone 13 PM. From the beginning, I was fully aware that the then upcoming official WhatsApp transfer would involve the Move to iOS app, meaning a phone factory reset would be expected.

Preparation before transfer:

• Turn off ALL possible settings in the Android relating to put app to sleep/phone lock etc so the Android phone, WhatsApp and Move to iOS app stay awake. For my S9+, the maximum setting to keep screen awake is only 10 mins, but I enabled the "keep phone unlocked at specific location" setting, so my phone managed to stay "awake" and kept working even though the screen was turned off after 10 mins.
• Turn off all the "auto connection" for WiFi on Android - not absolutely necessary but it's good to do. This is to make sure the Android won't suddenly reconnect to your home WiFi halfway through the transfer. Move to iOS app works by connecting the Android to a WiFi network created by the iPhone.
• Full backup of the WhatsApp on Android/Google drive - in case the transfer fails, still can restore the backup in Android.
• Full backup of iPhone to iCloud.
• Reset/erase iPhone - it will try to do the backup again during this step, can skip this step to save time if you have already done your backup.

Both phones were plugged into power and we were good to go.

 

[marshmallow96]

Launched the Move to iOS app and follow the instructions. When asked what would you like to transfer from your Android phone, select WhatsApp.



For me, I only selected WhatsApp cos I've already transferred all other things from Android to iPhone back in Feb 2022. If you are transferring to a brand new iPhone, what I found was that after the WhatsApp transfer is completed, it will come back to this same selection menu, perhaps you can select the rest then.

That led me to the start page. Clicked “Start” and that’s the beginning of my looonnngggg wait…

 

[marshmallow96]

After clicking “start”, I was stuck in this screen in what it seemed forever. I waited 15 mins, 30 mins, 45 mins… still preparing at 0%. Self-doubts sank in and I restarted the whole process some 3 or 4 times but still kept getting stuck at 0%.. in the end I decided to forget it and go to sleep, see what would happen the next morning…




So I woke up the next morning and saw that PREPARATION HAS BEEN COMPLETED (yay) and transfer to iPhone can proceed. I was still sleepy and too excited that I forgot to take a screenshot. Anyway that’s how it looks like... After that there was a message saying now get your iPhone ready to transfer or something like that:



For info, I’ve read on Twitter that it took 4 hours for someone with WhatsApp at 10GB. Android says my was 7.06GB on S9+. I dunno how long it took exactly because I slept… but the lesson is be patient and have faith cos it’s going to take hell long….

 

[marshmallow96]

Then I woke my iPhone up and continued with the on-screen instruction. It says it will take another 7 mins to complete, but again I'm stuck in this screen for what it seemed like forever:



In the end it took almost half an hour to complete . The app developer really needs to work on getting better time estimates tsk

And the transfer continued. This part didn't take too long:


After this step the transfer has completed. FINALLY!!! For those who want to restore your iPhone backup after that, read on...

 

[marshmallow96]

After WhatsApp transfer was done, the very first thing I did was to backup the WhatsApp to iCloud:



Once the WhatsApp backup was done. I reset my iPhone again. During the erase process it will attempt to make another backup to iCloud. I skipped that cos I don't want to make a newer backup of a blank iPhone

After the reset was done, I chose to restore iPhone from iCloud to get back my phone apps and settings.

 

[marshmallow96]

After the iPhone was restored from iCloud, I downloaded WhatsApp from the App Store. Opened WhatsApp and chose to restore chat history from iCloud.


The restoration was pretty fast. Now I have my WhatsApp transferred to iPhone without losing my stuff on iPhone

Main takeaway from my experience is you really need TIME and PATIENCE. Do set aside a long period of free time to do the transfer, it takes hours and you really don't want to stop halfway cos you have to attend to other matters.

That's all from me for now... And thanks for reading until this far

 

[pricky]

Thanks for sharing the experience and the steps. I can never understand why WhatsApp don’t come up with an option for us to choose if we want to backup to Google drive or iCloud…..and to restore from where our backup id

 

[paul02]

Good effort post!

 

[jtec14]

Thanks for sharing.
Just done transferring for my folks as well.

Sidetrack abit, did you have the issue of transferred photos not sorted in dates order? Thank you.

 

[marshmallow96]

Thanks for sharing the experience and the steps. I can never understand why WhatsApp don’t come up with an option for us to choose if we want to backup to Google drive or iCloud…..and to restore from where our backup id

Indeed... It's mind boggling why can't they just allow the transfer of backup to and fro Google and iCloud... I supposed it's not a technical issue but more of a commercial/legal issue hmmmm

Thanks for sharing.
Just done transferring for my folks as well.

Sidetrack abit, did you have the issue of transferred photos not sorted in dates order? Thank you.

Hi... I randomly checked the few chats with the most photos, so far the photos are in order and indicating the correct date. I'm not sure what's wrong, but back in the days when people used paid app for transfer, the photos not sorting correctly was a common issue. Perhaps try again if your folks' WhatsApp are not too big and taking hoursssss?

 

[jtec14]

Hi... I randomly checked the few chats with the most photos, so far the photos are in order and indicating the correct date. I'm not sure what's wrong, but back in the days when people used paid app for transfer, the photos not sorting correctly was a common issue. Perhaps try again if your folks' WhatsApp are not too big and taking hoursssss?

hahah users ok with it so don't bother.
Anyway I told them that if it bother them too much, the easier method is transfer the photos from Android to PC then PC to iphone again.

 

[marshmallow96]

hahah users ok with it so don't bother.
Anyway I told them that if it bother them too much, the easier method is transfer the photos from Android to PC then PC to iphone again.

Haha user ok then ok... Or backup the photos from Android to Google Photos, then just access the photos via Google Photos on iPhone

 

[ukyo100]

Actually they can do like "we chat" scan the QR code to do transfer.. very easy..

 

[Woshileeroy]

Just to share my personal experience to transfer Whatsapp from Android to iOS - hope it's helpful to those who still have doubts and mulling over the potential risk and inconvenience associated with the transfer

(one would genuinely be concerned after reading all the negative reviews on Move to iOS app!)
For details and comments from my experience, scroll down and read on.
For a TL;DR version, what you need to do to transfer WhatsApp from Android to iPhone while keeping your iPhone settings:
Backup iPhone and reset phone.
Do the WhatsApp transfer from Android via the Move to iOS app.
Upon successful transfer of WhatsApp to iPhone, immediately do a WhatsApp backup to iCloud in the WhatsApp app.
Reset iPhone again, this time restore iPhone from the backup you made in Step 1.
After restoration, download WhatsApp from App Store.
Open WhatsApp and choose restore backup from iCloud.
You’re done.
For a transfer from Android to brand new iPhone, it’s straightforward. Just use the Move to iOS app, follow every instruction and give it plenty of
TIME
and
PATIENCE
. You’d need both. It also helps to switch off all the power settings on Android for closing app and locking phone etc.
P.S.: I forgot to take photos or screenshot for some steps due to exhaustion or excitement at that point

some images are my own, while some are from publicly available images, added to the thread for clarity.

Hi, appreciate the walkthrough.
May I ask - at the point of using move to iOS, should the sim card be in the android or iPhone? Apologies if it sounds stupid, new iOS user, gonna set it up over the weekend. Thanks in advance.


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[marshmallow96]

Hi, appreciate the walkthrough.
May I ask - at the point of using move to iOS, should the sim card be in the android or iPhone? Apologies if it sounds stupid, new iOS user, gonna set it up over the weekend. Thanks in advance.


Read HWZ Forum Rules!

Hi, I put the SIM in iPhone, to me it seems to make more sense as that will be the new phone… but I’ve read other accounts that leaving the SIM in Android seems ok

 

[Woshileeroy]

Hi, I put the SIM in iPhone, to me it seems to make more sense as that will be the new phone… but I’ve read other accounts that leaving the SIM in Android seems ok

Noted, thanks for the reply


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[cstanhwz]

Actually they can do like "we chat" scan the QR code to do transfer.. very easy..

Yeah, I like this method too.

But the encryption prevents this from happening.

Wechat no encryption.

 

[ukyo100]

Yeah, I like this method too.

But the encryption prevents this from happening.

Wechat no encryption.

Can create a security let user think they want to encrypt or not..

 

[jq75]

The latest update support this function